iStrategyBlabs

Experience the Redd’s Apple Launcher!

Date

June 3, 2013
Posted By

brycerudow
Comments

0
Categories

Creative, Development, Experiential Marketing, Our Work

As an agency that appreciates a good beer every now and then, getting to work with MillerCoors, and Redd’s Apple Ale specifically, was a dream come true for us.

Redd’s Apple Ale is the beer for those looking to branch out, so when approaching the project, we knew that the sky was the limit. So we thought, “What if you got to throw apples in a bar like in the commercials?” Then, like an apple to the head, it hit us. What if to help launch Redd’s Apple Ale, we let users literally launch Redd’s with an 80mph apple launcher and a fully-stocked bar just itching to be destroyed, and what if we let users win prizes while destroying it? Thus, our Redd’s Launcher was born…

PLAY IT HERE, LIVE, RIGHT NOW!

In almost no time at all, we had a fully-functional (only slightly terrifying to have in the office) Redd’s Launcher that was able to be controlled via an internet connection.

But we wanted to make sure this experience really satisfied the desire to destroy a bar, so we spent weeks imagining, designing, and building our very own Redd’s Apple Ale bar; it had everything from a 15-foot lit-up Redd’s sign to a pool table to a moose head on the wall. Then, we threw bullseyes all over it, letting eagle-eyed users get the chance to win prizes for their great shots.

But while all of that is great on its own, we wanted to branch out even further with the idea. “What if we added a bunch of special activations throughout the 12-day experience?” So, and I don’t want to give away any spoilers, we made sure that each day of the event was overloaded with anything and everything users might want to see hit with an 80-mph ball, making sure that this experience is just as enjoyable for those waiting to take control of the Launcher as it is for the user launching. Adding in things like live user-voting and a Twitter display, we’ve guaranteed that.

Get your trigger fingers ready for 12-days of non-stop destruction, brought to you by Redd’s Apple Ale.

Vine: ISL Favorites from Brands and Fans

Date

March 18, 2013
Posted By

Eric Shutt
Comments

1
Categories

Community Engagement, Experiential Marketing, Social Media

If you’ve been paying attention lately, you’ve heard of Twitter’s new video sharing platform, Vine – a mobile-only app that lets you record and share 6-second video clips edited on the fly, in an incredibly fun and unique way. It combines the best of photo, video, stop-motion, and our favorite — animated GIFs.

Here’s how it works:

Sign into Vine with Twitter and that’s it, you’re ready to record. With Vine’s custom camera, video records when you tap and hold on your phone screen. Take your finger off the screen and Vine stops recording. The simple, real-time editing lets you create everything from simple 6-second un-cut videos, to more complex stop-motion clips and animations.

How brands are using Vine:

Across all industries, from food to gaming, brands have used Vine to foster online discussion with their fans and even tease new products. Here are a few great examples :

GE: It’s Raining Data

Gap: What shoes do you plan to wear with The 1969 Skimmer?

Rolling Stone: Guess Who’s on the cover

Nintendo of America: Check out what you get with the Wii U ZombiU Deluxe Set

Bacardi: #SixSecondCocktail

A few of our personal favorites:

People have been shooting and sharing Vines non-stop since the service launched this past January.

Some cool Vine spin-off apps include Channel 6, ”a personalized channel of videos posted to Vine” (type a search term in the bottom left corner to sort and filter). Similarly, All Around the Vines pulls together a collection of Vine videos you might like based on category and tag. Here are a few of our staff favorite Vines:

- @Corbett3000

- @eshutt

-@EmilyTav

Best of both worlds:

We worked with our client Embassy Suites to get them on Vine and create their #FirstPost to promote the delicious breakfast you can expect when you stay at an Embassy Suites hotel.

With all of these fantastic Vines in just over a month, we can’t wait to see what comes in the near future from fans and brands alike.

+++

All-star interns Ryan Horgan and Zach Khan contributed to this article.

2013: The Year We Hack the Physical World Hard

Date

February 20, 2013
Posted By

corbett3000
Comments

0
Categories

Experiential Marketing, Innovation Design, Our Work

If you follow the work we do, you know we’re passionate about hacking the boundary between the digital and physical words. In our daily adventures we come across a lot of fun things and create some ourselves. The following is a list of projects any entrepreneur, marketer, or creative hacker should be aware of if they’re planning to hack the physical world in 2013:

Social Machines™: The GE Social Fridge

Twine: A wireless square with sensors and a simple web app to set rules, Twine tells you what your things are doing by email, text or Twitter.

SmartThings: Makes it easy to connect the things in your physical world to the Internet. You can monitor, control, automate, and have fun with them from anywhere – at home, office, or on the go.

Ninja Block: Simple but powerful open source hardware backed by an amazing web service called Ninja Cloud that allows your Ninja Block to talk to your favorite web apps.

Raspberry Pi: A credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

Arduino: An open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments

BugLabs: Bug’s unique, cloud-based Swarm platform abstracts the raw functionalists (e.g., sensors, actuators, transceivers) of any hardware device and exposes them as web services, allowing simple drag-and-drop creation of applications, no matter how heterogeneous the hardware in use may be.

Philip Hue Lights: The LED technology inside every hue wireless LED bulb is a little bit special. That’s because it can display different tones of white light – from warm yellow white to vibrant blue white. Of course, it can also recreate any color in the spectrum. Naturally.

Sound Bottle: A music medium that can reproduce a recorded voice as music. It makes a database of sound sources that is managed and used as formal and automatic repetitions, and forms a music medium of the day.

There’s also a ton of other work we’ve done in this space. Have a look at the following:

FourSquare Lockbox

Ford Tweeting Cake

The Social Cooler

The Thought for Food Social Vending Machine

The Shot Bot

Announcing: Social Media Week DC 2013, Produced by iStrategyLabs

Date

November 24, 2012
Posted By

Katie Lancos
Comments

2
Categories

Community Engagement, Experiential Marketing

iStrategyLabs will be producing DC’s second annual Social Media Week, to be held next February 18-22, joining the ranks of other global tech and digital leaders New York, Hamburg, Miami, Tokyo, Toronto, Milan, Paris, Singapore, Doha, Copenhagen and Lagos.

This week-long festival will feature independently curated (and mostly free) speakers, panels, workshops, events, and parties all across the district celebrating tech and social media in the Nation’s Capital.

From networking events, to political panels, to keynotes at the monthly DC Tech Meetup, Social Media Week will connect people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media, asserting DC as a growing leader in the tech industry.

Event submission now open so don’t delay! Submit your event here.

If you’re interested in sponsoring please email katie@istrategylabs.com.